A drunk driver who crashed his car in New Zealand continued to sip beer in his overturned car because he had "nothing better to do" while waiting for cops to arrive, The Dominion Post reported Wednesday.

Paul Nigel Sneddon, from Palmerston North on New Zealand's North Island, was unable to say how much alcohol he had consumed when the police finally caught up with him, beer can in hand, in his overturned Ford Laser.

"Plenty," he told an officer. "I've been drinking for four days straight."

Sneddon later told The Dominion Post he was at the lowest point in his life when he went on the drunken binge. He had just lost his job and was told his father had prostate cancer.

"I'm separated from my wife, I've got no friends, no one comes to visit me and that job was my whole life," he told the newspaper. "So to remove that was to remove my purpose in life."

But he said he was stupid to have continued drinking after the crash.

"I was lying there, trying to get the doors open but couldn't. I remember the inside light not working and thinking, 'It's not like I'm going to read a book,' so I opened another can," Sneddon said.

The former baker pleaded guilty to careless driving and having a breath-alcohol reading of 1191micrograms. The legal limit in New Zealand is 400 micrograms.

Judge Gregory Ross fined him $1,100 and disqualified him from driving for 10 months. It was his first offense.